At last count, there were more than 24 billion stolen credentials circulating on the dark web. Considering that stolen passwords and usernames are big business among criminals, it’s not enough to simply teach good password hygiene. Your team also has to monitor the web for the credentials that have already been compromised.
Monitoring the Web for Compromised Credentials with Flare
How does Flare monitor for compromised credentials?
Flare automates the process of continuously scanning the clear & dark web, as well as compromised Telegram channels, for compromised and stolen credentials. Flare’s Threat Exposure Management (TEM) platform sends your team alerts when it detects your organization’s name, employees’ names, domains, IP, and any other key information so your team can find stolen or leaked passwords and usernames when they appear in places they shouldn’t be.
Why do security teams use Flare for compromised credential monitoring?
With billions of credentials circulating online, finding one that belongs to your organization is like finding a needle in a haystack. Yet the threats posed by stolen credentials cannot be ignored: stolen passwords and usernames are capable of handing criminals the key to your networks and data. By using Flare’s automated platform, your team can be made aware when your data has been exposed, so they can immediately take action.
What do you get with Flare’s compromised credential monitoring solution?
- Proactive cybersecurity: Continuous scanning of the clear and dark web for data leaks
- Endpoint security: Monitoring for malicious activity on public-facing assets
- Data leak prevention: Detection of data breaches and data leaks
- Compliance: Strengthened compliance with data privacy regulations
- Less noise: Immediate, relevant alerts when issues are discovered
Compromised Credentials Monitoring: An Overview
What is compromised credential monitoring?
Monitoring for compromised credentials is a security practice that involves continuously scanning for and detecting stolen or exposed login credentials — such as usernames and passwords — on the dark web, the clear web, paste sites, and illicit Telegram channels. Such monitoring helps organizations promptly identify and respond to potential security threats by automatically alerting them when their employees’ or customers’ credentials are found in unauthorized locations. By addressing compromised credentials quickly, organizations can mitigate the risk of unauthorized access and protect sensitive data.
Why monitor the web for compromised credentials?
Data breaches tend to make for more data breaches. Case in point: more than 60% of data breaches begin with stolen credentials as the initial access vector. Once a threat actor is able to log into your environment, even with a non-privileged user account, they are able to extract information about users and progress deeper into your network, where they can do more damage.
How do criminals steal credentials?
Threat actors employ various methods to compromise login credentials:
- Phishing: Tricking individuals into providing their login information by using fraudulent emails, messages, or websites that mimic legitimate ones. Victims are often lured into entering their credentials into fake login pages.
- Malware: The use of malicious software, such as keyloggers, spyware, and trojans, to capture login credentials as they are typed on a keyboard or stored on a device. This malware can be delivered through infected email attachments, downloads, or compromised websites.
- Brute force attacks: Using automated tools to guess passwords by systematically trying different combinations until finding one that matches. Weak and reused passwords are particularly vulnerable to this type of attack.
- Credential stuffing: Using lists of previously leaked usernames and passwords from other data breaches to try and gain access to accounts. Since many people reuse passwords across different services, this method can be highly effective.
- Social engineering: Criminals manipulate individuals into revealing their login credentials by exploiting human psychology. This can include impersonating a trusted entity or authority figure, creating a sense of urgency, or exploiting a person’s helpful nature.
- Man-in-the-Middle Attacks (MitM): Intercepting communication between a user and a legitimate service to capture login credentials. This can occur over insecure networks, such as public Wi-Fi, where attackers can eavesdrop on data being transmitted.
- Exploiting vulnerabilities: Cybercriminals exploit security vulnerabilities in software, applications, or websites to gain unauthorized access to user databases containing login credentials.
- Data breaches: Attackers target and breach organizations’ databases to steal large volumes of credentials. These stolen credentials are often sold or shared on the dark web.
Integrate the world’s easiest to use and most comprehensive cybercrime database into your security program in 30 minutes.
Why is it Especially Important to Monitor for Compromised Credentials in Today’s Cybersecurity Landscape?
Why monitor compromised credentials now?
The use of stolen credentials is most commonly the first part of a cyber attack. According to Verizon’s Data Breach Investigation Report (DBIR), nearly a quarter of data breaches begin with stolen credentials. In fact, over the past 10 years, Verizon reports that stolen credentials were used in a third of all data breaches. With stolen credentials being used as an attack vector, it’s critical that security teams take a two-pronged approach to credentials: using multifactor authentication to prevent unauthorized access, as well as monitoring the web to find the credentials that have already been stolen.
In addition, credentials are now brought to the market faster than ever (sometimes with automated tools), often in less than 24 hours.
What tools are needed for compromised credential monitoring?
It can be hard to monitor for stolen credentials yourself if you don’t know where to look. Stolen passwords are often sold on the dark web — the parts of the Internet that aren’t accessible by standard browsers or search engines. Bad actors also use the illicit Telegram channels to conduct sales and discuss attacks. Threat monitoring platforms like Flare are able to monitor the places your browser can’t reach to find threats to your organization.
What’s the impact of a data breach caused by stolen credentials?
Data breaches are expensive. The average cost of a data breach is $4.88 million, including the cost of finding and remediating the breach, interruptions of operations, legal fees and other fines. There is good news, however. Organizations that use AI and automated solutions for security are able to reduce the average cost of a data breach by more than $2 million.
Compromised Credentials Monitoring and Flare
Flare provides the leading Threat Exposure Management (TEM) solution for organizations. Our technology constantly scans the online world, including the clear & dark web, to discover unknown events, automatically prioritize risks, and deliver actionable intelligence you can use instantly to improve security. Protect your organization by monitoring the web for compromised credentials with Flare.
Our solution integrates into your security program in 30 minutes to provide your team with actionable intelligence and automated remediation for high-risk exposure. See it yourself with our free trial.
